Candice and I arrived last Sunday in London, Ontario for our first Fringe Festival of the year.  We didn't tour our show, "Middleton: a folk musical", last year and we were itching to be back on tour.  This is also the first time either of us have been to this beautiful city.  

Poiema Productions is producing Candice's one-woman show, "Anatolia Speaks", written and directed by Kenneth Brown.  We had a preview the day before we left Edmonton, and it was the first time I had seen the play.  

What a beautiful piece of theatre.  The writing is brilliant and Candice completely becomes Anatolia, an immigrant from Bosnia living in Edmonton and working at Superstore.  She shares heart-wrenching stories of the life she has left behind, as well as touching hopes and dreams of the life she has started and will continue to build.  The play puts an immigrant’s life into perspective- especially the things that happen to them before they immigrate.  We are extremely lucky to be living in Canada, free to do as we please with a surplus of food and water to fuel us as we go. Anatolia doesn't take anything for granted and celebrates the life she has now without throwing away her past.  She has every right to be an angry, cold, dark person after going through life in war-torn Bosnia and her difficult travels to get here, but instead she is uplifted, joyful, and hopeful of what is to come.  Her personality and outlook is a breath of fresh air and will capture anyone she shares her story with.  

We opened the show last night and it went great!  Our audience was responsive and Candice received a standing ovation, well deserved I might add.  We were in a wonderful article about Ken Brown (and the 5 shows he's involved in here) and put in the list of the top 10 buzzed about shows in the London Free Press so I'd say we are off to a great start here in London!  It doesn't hurt that the show is written by Ken Brown, not only our teacher and mentor, but also the man who has taken part in the Fringe Festival since the year after it's creation.  He has written or co-written over 30 produced plays!  It is a huge honour to produce one of his shows.  

London has been so good to us and we are sure it will continue to show its love throughout the Fringe.  Break legs everyone!

-B

---Other shows to check out at the London Fringe: "Minding Dad", "Grumpus Gets Revenge", "Be A Man", & "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea"

Block 1912, a cafe full of like-minded people, an aroma of chai lattes and steeping teas, and couches who’s overuse and gratitude engulfed their guests. We sat. Four girls ripe out of college with dreams and goals and no doubts or fears, not yet tainted by the failures and lessons life kindly hands over when you go for something big. 

We needed a name. As so many theatre companies that have come before us and the endless amount that will be born after. We started with a need, a great desire to create but most of all, create together. It isn’t everyday you find a group of people with the same amount of passion for a singular thing, each bringing their own special gifts. We shared a need to work in theatre, and if the roles we were itching to play didn’t exist, we’d create them ourselves. How hard could writing a show be?

But we still needed a name. As we sat in the cafe, we discussed every possible company name that came to mind. Inside jokes, popular titles, funny words, sappy and heartfelt labels. What would describe who we are and still be pleasant to a stranger’s ear? Melissa sat in her large, tufted chair as we debated, looking through a book she happened to have with her at the time. And she found it. Poiema. Google came in handy as we searched it’s exact meaning and context. 

Poiema (noun) po-ay-mah. A hebrew word meaning masterpiece and workmanship. The words were epic, meaningful… and a bit dramatic for our small theatre company. But we knew we were beginning something great and lasting, and having a powerful name to live up to was the perfect way to set our goals high and have a constant reminder of where we started and the passion that brought us together. 

It hasn’t been easy. We have failed, succeeded, fought, cried, laughed, argued and lost sight of goals. But, as Sara so importantly wrote in our blog two weeks ago, we’ve always tried to enjoy the process. The workmanship. What is the point of having a great show if you hated the year leading up to it? If you lost friends in the process? If you became unhealthy due to stress? To us, there is nothing more important than spending time together creating in a positive and healthy way and learning as much as we can in the process. 

As an avid 'diy'-er (of clothing), I found a great craft of writing on fabric with bleach to create a design. As all the Poiema Gals (except for me) have birthdays in October and November, I thought it would be a great present. I made us all “I am Poiema” shirts and it occurred to me what that means. I am hardworking, I am a masterpiece, I have big dreams, and I do my best to enjoy life as it comes without constantly pushing myself for a final result. It makes me wonder: Are you Poiema?

-B

Lately I have been trying to watch a couple episodes a week of “Inside The Actors Studio”, a talk show in which James Lipton of The Actors Studio in New York, does an hour long, in-depth interview with a famous Actor/Actress. The common thread that seems to bind the best film and television actors of our time, and the concept that pops up more frequently the longer I pursue a performing career, is “Loving the Process.”

Kate Winslet spends hours building a back story for each character she plays, and at the end of a movie she has notebooks filled with thoughts and script pages covered with scribbles. Meryl Streep approaches every character new, trying not to predetermine her method for ‘finding’ each character, but tries to allow the character to speak to her. The actors that I really admire are the ones that lose themselves in the character, and spend months researching, traveling if needed, to create the life and world for whom they embody on screen. 

In the theatre realm of life, when reading plays like “I Am My Own Wife” or “The Syringa Tree”, the finished product is fantastic, and the preface describes years or perhaps a decade long journey that lead them to their final published production. These playwrights wrote, workshopped, performed, and re-wrote as little as four or five times before they finally felt like they had “finished.”

One lesson that is staring me in the face at the moment is the amount of research a successful artist does, and how unrealistic it is to think that you can write something down, perform it, and expect a rave review. 

The biggest elephants in my bedroom at the moment are the facts that I am NOT an avid reader, researching is NOT my favorite past time, and I want results NOW, not 10 years from now. 

Luckily, when you need to learn something, for example patience, life provides you with endless line-ups of indecisive customers who take 20 minutes to buy a can of tomatoes. This year, life is confronting me with many situations that are teaching me to learn to love the process. After rehearsing a play for 2 months at Seacoast Studios, where I study in Vancouver, we found out we could not get the rights, and so never got to perform the piece for anyone. Talk about all process. I am currently writing a children's play about divorce. Talk about a play that needs research and contemplation! I have been watching movies and taking books out of the library to find out what would help a child going through divorce deal with the aftermath of their crumbled universe. Finally, I am researching the role of Joan from Bernard Shaw’s ‘Saint Joan.’  There is no date for performing this role, just a role I would like to play and explore, not to mention a great character development exercise for future roles I will play. The great thing, a pleasant surprise in fact, is that slowly (ever soooooo SLOWLY) I am beginning to enjoy the reading and learning. In other words the process is becoming enough on it’s own, without needing to have a finished product valued by the enjoyment of it’s audience. 

As Poiema, we are doing the same thing, realizing that building a good company takes years. If we wish to be successful, we have to learn to love writing, re-writing, workshopping and researching - loving the process. Lucky for us we love being together so much, that learning to love the process is that much easier. 

-Sara